Endoscopes are typically used for minimally invasive surgery or to provide access to an internal location of a patient so that a doctor is provided with visual access. Endoscopes, during use, may be inserted into a location that may include debris that may cover the end of the endoscope and especially cover an imaging device located at the end of the endoscope. For example, an endoscope being used for surgery may become covered by blood and the blood may impair the vision of a surgeon so that surgery becomes increasingly difficult. Attempts have been made to provide various devices to assist a surgeon in clearing the debris from the imaging device of the endoscope and restore vision. These devices may remove some of the debris from the imaging device of the endoscope, however, these devices may not remove all of the debris and/or may leave spots or droplets on the imaging device, which may result in continued impairment. These devices may have features that attempt to control the flow of fluid, suction, or both at the end of the endoscope in an attempt to clear debris, spots, droplets, or a combination thereof from the endoscope. Further, many of the features at the end of the sheath are configured to align the sheath with the endoscope and these feature perform little if any directing of fluid across the end of the endoscope.
Examples of some endoscope cleaning devices may be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,575,756; 7,708,689; and 8,079,952; and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0230716. all of which are incorporated by reference in their entirety herein for all purposes. It would be attractive to have an endoscope sheath that self-aligns the endoscope within the sheath so that a conduit, a lumen, a channel, or a combination thereof is created along all or a portion of the length of the sheath. It would be attractive to have an endoscope sheath that includes a channel that can accommodate fluid, suction, one or more functional elements, or a combination thereof. What is needed is an endoscope sheath that includes one or more non-circular sections that align the endoscope within the sheath and create a channel, conduit, a lumen, or a combination thereof.